


Fair

by Code16



Series: Have To Offer [5]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: AU--with powers, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Harold working alone, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Death, Multi, No sex on screen (but it's discussed and implied), Other, Self-Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 18:47:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6020992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Code16/pseuds/Code16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sometimes, it’s not his mind that pays the price for another life."</p><p>Or, I have gotten a few requests for a Deal!verse AU in which it is Harold who has the relevant power.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fair

**Author's Note:**

> If you're not familiar with this verse, see endnotes for summary and warning.

Some days, it feels to Harold like he knows before he properly should. As he receives a number, delves into their lives, begins to watch them, searches for connections, for likely candidates. It rests as a presense inside him, a premonition like night on the horizon. (He’s tracked it before, days worth of notes. The correlation is imperfect but existent. He doesn’t know why. That’s something he’s had to get used to, these days.)

Most days, he can identify a candidate, in the end. The number themselves, or the one targeting them. Emails, phone calls, cameras, records. Finding threads and tracking them, following tracks. Checking his work as he can. 

It’s when he gets to the end of this that a decision is to be made. 

Sometimes, he can simply call the police - plain evidence, an opportunity out in the open, an aspect easily reported and easily revealed. Some days, there’s a simple third option - a call to the target with certain pieces of information, a sudden job offer in a distant city, a well-timed reminder of love or value or life.

Other days, it is necessary to deal with the to-be-perpetrators directly. Through intermediaries, sometimes - he has them, short term employees who only know as much as he tells them. Sometimes, as one of his own many selves. He does not like to resort to threats; prices are safer, and he has much to offer, to compose one that will be sufficient. Money that he can make all but legitimate or untraceable. Whatever can be obtained, with money and influence, with his hands on a keyboard and the mind that brought out the internet and birthed the Machine. 

And some days - sometimes identified by his foreboding, sometimes not - he says  _ I am certain a mutually beneficial agreement can be found _ , and he knows the true answer is - different. Knows what it is on him to say next. Sometimes, it’s not his mind that pays the price for another life.

Harold knows he isn’t attractive, not as it is generally considered. It’s not his appearance that those he concludes these understandings with want him for. Attraction is in his presentation, his self-possession. His possession beyond self. Desire is in the power they receive over him. To take his careful exterior and unravel it, to see a man who can command with his presence and spend millions on a whim on his knees before them. To hear his voice when he calls himself their fucktoy, hear it again later when he can barely muster words. When they turn to pleas.

As they desire, so they receive.

He dresses with the greatest care, these days. Keeps extra sets of clothing for every identity to replace those that are either unsalvageable or that he cannot stand to put on again. Has a particular kit in each of his safehouses. Medical supplies, to assist his even-accelerated healing. Painkillers (they don’t always work, but it’s worth the chance). Sources of warmth, fabric and electronic. The teas he’s found most conducive. Aids to sleep, for the nights he needs them. Statistics and copied photographs, for the nights or days he needs a reminder.

Arrangements are something he’s excelled at, all his life. Adjustment took time, of course, since this had come to him. Since fire had ripped through him, since he’d died to the world, since he’d taken this work of lives onto himself. An additional change, in his life that had been reshaped so utterly so abruptly. The work is an inexorable outcome, in some ways (that was a core truth, with computers. Take input, take a function, and the output resulted. A computer wouldn’t alter a calculation because someone didn’t like the answer. Hiding the truth did not allow escape from it). It is his inheritance, perhaps, in other ways. 

The ability, for all its unworldliness, seemed almost as ineluctable, as natural. With his mind he had failed to save Nathan, so his body will be used to save others. Harold considers this more than fair.

He’s had time, now. He hopes he’s used it well.

In the library that he has made the hub for his work, he keeps two boards of facts and photographs. One is of lives. He looks at it, on days when there are no options. When for all his resources he is helpless. He looks at it on days he finds himself wishing he could forget again. 

The other is not of lives, anymore. He tries not to look at it too much, unless he needs to. Doesn’t succeed, always. (One photograph is circled in red. He’d sat across from a man who’d shown teeth when he smiled, when he moved his eyes over Harold. Whose dating record, on Harold’s screen, had tracked through hospital records more than friendczar notes. He’d sat, and he’d known the next step, heard the offer in his mind. He’d sat and he had refused. Had offered money and property. Had been rejected. Had said,  _ I’m sorry we could not come to an arrangement _ , politely taken his leave. 

Six hours later, he’d pinned the pictures of the body below the photograph. The autopsy report. The chairs at the funeral.

He hasn’t refused, since.) 

This day, he’d felt the foreboding. Written it down, to adjust percentages if needed. Sat at his computer and pulled lives in front of him.

This day, he walks into a paneled office in a brown wool suit and a titian vest. Introduces himself with a handshake and a business card. Sits down in a paneled chair and knows he has a true positive. Looks across the table, impels his face and his body to divulge nothing.

“I know that you are planning to kill your niece.” By now, he barely has to struggle to keep his voice just as neutral. “I would invite you to reconsider.” The man across from him smiles.

“How very inviting.”  He pushes his chair away from the table, pats his lap. “Why don’t you come sit somewhere more comfortable. And lose the suit.”

As they desire, so they receive.

**Author's Note:**

> The general summary of this verse is "John has the power to ask people for things they wouldn’t have done otherwise but are on some level open to, and in return he owes them sexual satisfaction however they might want it". In this fic, it is Harold who has that power. The conditions remain the same - he always has agency in making the decision, but he wouldn't choose to have this sex otherwise, and it's generally something he endures rather than wants.
> 
> [My tumblr for these kinds of things](http://findundergrounddragoutofwater.tumblr.com). I love fandom social things, and anyone who feels like they might want to message etc me for any reason is encouraged to totally do so.


End file.
